He Drown She in the Sea

by Shani Mootoo

  THE GIFT OF EGGS

  Dolly returned from market one day with news: she had met Mrs. Sangha. Mrs. Sangha, well aware of her previous servant’s new station in life, asked how she was adapting, and as if to acknowledge the change, although she suggested no particular date, she said that Dolly must come to the house for tea. Dolly told her son that she had asked Mrs. Sangha if Boss was still home or if he went back to the other lady. The boy thought it brazen of her, was shocked that they could have such easy, matter-of-fact conversation and be light or irreverent about it all. Mr. Sangha was at present abroad, but not for business. He just liked it there; now that the war was over, there was a lot of excitement, even in the queues that still existed for food and clothing. Although one could see hardship in the faces of people, one saw in them hope and determination, too. People who, during the war, were jobless were able to work clearing the streets of the rubble of bombed buildings. Wherever one looked, new buildings were going up, each and every one an architectural wonder. Narine Sangha wanted to be in that great country to witness the changes taking place. Mrs. Sangha told Dolly all of this, describing everything as if she herself had been there in the great country, witness to the changes taking place. Dolly asked Mrs. Sangha if “the woman” went with him. Mrs. Sangha didn’t know. Eventually, with a hint of fatigue in her voice, Mrs. Sangha admitted: who knew, maybe the woman did go; it was reasonable to assume so, as that woman was young enough to do that sort of thing. Besides, she added, who would look after her daughter if she went traipsing around the world?

  As if in passing, Dolly told her son that Mrs. Sangha had asked about him. She wanted to know how he was doing in school, if he was able to catch up. Dolly said, again as if in passing, that Mrs. Sangha had mentioned that during the holidays, the girl went with her father on an airplane. He took her to the island of Trinidad for a vacation. The boy was surprised. When they were living in Raleigh, his own mother would not have considered allowing him to take a ride in Uncle Mako’s boat, even if they were to have remained within her range of vision. If he had ever gone out on a boat even meters off the coast of Raleigh, he at least might have been able to say that he, too, had once stepped off the island of Guanagaspar.

  Following Dolly’s encounter with Mrs. Sangha, she became contemplative. She would begin to do some ordinary daily house task, then, in the middle of it, would stop. She would think a while. Then she would call Rodney, Mr. Persad’s yard boy. He would answer, “Yes, Madam?” She would purse her lips as if to say, “That’s right. That’s what I am to you.” She would get him to complete the task she had started.

  Rather than go down to the backyard to catch, kill, and pluck a fowl for dinner, she would awkwardly order Rodney to do it. She would stand right behind him, watching every move he made, correcting him, telling him how to do it her way. So for a while, it was Rodney who washed the dishes, cleaned the windows and mirrors, squeezed oranges for juice, swept the house, dusted, and mopped, whereas, up until a short while before, she had done it all with studied gratitude for Mr. Persad’s kindnesses. Before long Rodney could be found sitting on the back stairs hemming Mr. Persad’s trousers, at the kitchen table, a mess of cut flowers, bush bugs, and ladybugs crawling on the table, tiny fluorescent-green grasshoppers caught in the curled hairs of his dark brown arms as he trimmed leaves and stems and arranged the lot in a vase. Dolly ordered and watched more and more, and became easier in this new role by the minute. She had become an employer.

  One day she sent Rodney down with a bowl to collect eggs from the chickens in the backyard. She carefully washed and patted the eggs dry herself. She arranged them in a green translucent glass bowl, covered the bowl with a fresh kitchen cloth, and handed it to her son. She told him to carry them, a little present for Mrs. Sangha, a mile’s walk from where they lived in Marion. Even though a very long period of time had passed since his encounter with Narine Sangha, the boy was not ready to reenter that house. He said, trying to sound more uninterested in the excursion than insolent, “Why you don’t send Rodney with them?”

  Dolly sucked her teeth loudly. “Look, child, where you learning to talk back so? You feel you could talk to me so now you living in town? You not too big for me to lay mih hand on you, you hear? I ask you to do one thing for me and you can’t do it?”

  How could he tell her that they didn’t live like town people; the yard outside with chickens strutting around and fouling it up smelled like a backward country yard, not like a town yard. He wanted to say that he did not want to make deliveries like a grocery-store errand boy. He wanted to suggest that she bake a cake with the eggs and send the cake, not eggs from the chickens they still kept. But he could not insult her. He was silent.

  “Child, you going to let those people curb your movements in the world? We living in town now, and I don’t work for nobody no more. I, Dolly Persad, have servant—manservant, to boot—now. And if that is not enough, nobody better than me or my son.”

  Dolly Persad. The boy wondered if that meant he, too, had become a Persad.

  She softened, lowered her voice. “Remember this. How much times I must tell you? But you can’t get it through your thick head. They family come here, to this part of the world, same as mine, you hear? Same as Mr. Persad family. Better than we, my foot!” By now the boy had come to know his mother’s rant. He tapped his foot on the floor and rolled his eyes. “You feeling impatient with me? Well, I will say it again and again, until I feel you hear me good.” She glared at him and spoke deliberately, as if intending to imprint her words for good this time. “They cross them terrible waters—let me tell you—in the same stinking boats. All of we lie down side by side, catch head lice, cough, and cold, chew betel leaf together, and spit blood. They enter this country through the same procedures. They did have to line up for placement, answer the same questions, and do daily hard labor under estate boss and the hot sun in cane field. Everybody get treat the same way. Everybody had was to line up for pay and for handouts, one and all. And no matter how some rise, how some fall, or how some stay put, all of we—Mr. Persad family, my family, your father family, Mrs. Sangha family, and Narine Sangha family—and by that I mean people who have their eyes in the back of their heads always facing abroad, as if abroad even noticing us here on this island, and people who can’t take their eyes off from the one spot where they feet planted—all, one and all, stem from the same tide. And it had a time every one of us was servant. You hear me? But child, I didn’t pick up myself and move all the way to Marion just for style. What I do, I do for you. And I don’t want you kneeling down before nobody but God, you hear me? And when was the last time you do that in any case, eh? Take the eggs, and go and ring they bell! I have enough to give, and so I will give. Don’t look frighten-frighten so. Freshen up your face and go. Now for now, not later. Don’t waste no more time thinking in your backyard ways. You attending school, just like town children.”

  He went briskly down to the shower stall. He scrubbed his arms, elbows, knees, and feet with a chip of pumice stone, washed his ears with a wash rag, inside, outside, and behind.

  Mrs. Sangha had never seen him wear long pants. They would make him look more solemn, older, more like a town boy, he thought. Before the mirror in his mother’s room, he parted his hair and sleeked it down with a little hair grease. It had grown out and was being cut by a barber in the town, not shaved like Abrahim used to do to everyone in Raleigh, but in the popular fashion for boys of his age. By the time he was ready to leave, he was sweating from all the fussing and nervousness. He walked in the heat, conscious of being a person, of having some sense of stylishness, to the house at the corner of Beau Moreau Street and Ashton Road.

  At the gate he couldn’t help himself: he hesitated. A jumbled mantra began to play softly in his head. All of we, one and all. Same tide. Better than me, my foot! You attending school. You attending school. He grabbed hold of the iron bell that hung from the wrought-iron gate and shook it vigorously. Mrs. Sangha came out onto the verandah. W
hen she saw him, she called out, “Is you Harry, boy? Eheh, wait one minute. I sending Patsy to open the gate for you. But look at him, na, in long pants and thing. You get big, boy.”

  He tried to be serious, but he broke into a smile, and every particle of his body knew happiness.

  Patsy let him in. Even though Mrs. Sangha did not pull him to her like she used to, he didn’t mind, for he was a big boy now. Still, when she put a hand on his shoulder and ushered him into the house, he caught the familiar scent of her skin, her body soap, and the washing detergent in her clothing. He handed her the bowl and said, “Mammy send these.”

  She said, “You mammy never forget me.” She picked an egg, held it up, turning it in the light. “But the chicks laying nice eggs. Look, Patsy. Save these for tomorrow breakfast. Feel them: good weight, nice size, better than the ones from Hing Wan shop.”

  She turned with the bowl and walked swiftly to the kitchen. Dolly’s son stood there until Patsy, standing behind him, poked him in his back to move on. As they went through the house to the back where the kitchen was, he hoped to see his friend, but the house, looking smaller than he remembered it, with unfamiliar curtains, was quiet. There was no sign of her.

  Mrs. Sangha seemed genuinely happy to see him. She turned and looked at him from his head to his feet while they walked. “You get so good-looking, boy.”

  He remembered how indulgent she used to be with him. In the kitchen she put both hands on his shoulders. “Look how nice you dress up. Mammy tell me you going to school.”

  His response came only as a whisper. “Yes. I going to Canadian Friends.”

  “Yes, yes. I know. You sitting exams same time. You liking school?”

  She didn’t say same time as whom. He could hardly breathe, wanting not merely a veiled reference to her but to know where she was. He wouldn’t ask. Without offering, Mrs. Sangha poured a glass of lime juice from a jug in the refrigerator, then set it and a coconut drop on a saucer on the small kitchen table. She pulled out a bench for him to sit. She sat on the chair opposite him. She pointed to the drop. “Patsy bake today. You remember how you used to like Patsy coconut drops? Good thing you come today. You can eat one fresh.”

  He continued to wonder about the girl, why she hadn’t come out to greet him. Perhaps her father, Narine Sangha, was still abroad, and perhaps she was with him. He was afraid to lift the glass to his mouth, sure that in his mixture of happiness to see Mrs. Sangha, and nervousness about seeing—and also not seeing—the girl, that he might drop it, or might bang it hard against his teeth, causing it or his teeth to break. He was sure that if he picked up the drop, it would crumble to bits between his fingers and make a mess on Mrs. Sangha’s spotless linoleum floor.

  Patsy had leaned back against the counter. Her arms were folded as she regarded the boy, the son of a onetime fellow maid. He picked up the drop and put it to his mouth. The scents of vanilla and coconut flavorings that Patsy used in all her sweets were achingly familiar. But when he took a bite of it, he felt dizzy and found that in an instant his appetite had vanished. He fidgeted. It was unbearable not knowing where the girl was. He knew it would be improper to ask.

  Just when he thought, But I am no longer her maid’s son. Look how nicely she is treating me. Surely I will be allowed to ask for my friend, there was a thumping of feet ascending the back steps.

  Mrs. Sangha said, almost in a whisper, to Patsy, “Boss.” And she jumped up, whipping the plate with the boy’s barely touched coconut drop and the glass of untouched juice away from the table and into the sink. He instinctively stood up, backed away from the bench and the table.

  Boss appeared at the kitchen door and said, “I sent Munir to pick up daughter from lessons. It is twelve o’clock. What is for lunch?” He saw the boy and stopped. The haunting sensation of a sack of flour weighing down upon his chest returned, and the boy’s breath was momentarily arrested. His face burned, and his upper lip broke into a sweat. Even so, he knew now that his friend had not come out to see him not because she was avoiding him but because she was not in the house; she had gone for lessons, perhaps she was studying for the exams. He was dizzy.

  “Who is this?”

  Mrs. Sangha did not answer. In fear, he almost said his name out loud, but Patsy, seeing his lips part, burst in, “The egg boy. He come to bring eggs.”

  Mr. Sangha turned and walked away. He had not remembered the boy, which was not surprising, as it had been some years since the boy was last in the house. Mrs. Sangha’s shoulders had stooped, and one hand lay flat on her chest, as if to quiet her heaving. Patsy had put her hand on the boy’s shoulder and begun to show him the way out when Mr. Sangha shouted, “I have some shoes need cleaning. Let him clean them and give him a shilling. What is for lunch? I am hungry.”

  Mrs. Sangha shouted, “Patsy making lunch now. It almost ready. Five minutes.” She shooed them out of the house, telling Patsy, “I will warm up the roti, take him down and hurry back up.” Then she whispered to the boy, “Go now. I will tell him you had to go. Rose gone to swimming lessons. When she come back, I will tell her you was here. Tell your Mammy thanks for the eggs. And you—”

  She laid the palm of her hand on his cheek. “I happy to see you. Go now.” News of Rose emboldened him; he wanted to know more about her swimming lessons. No particular question, however, would form in his mind. In any case, it was too late: Mrs. Sangha had already hurried away.

  When he got down to the padlocked gate, which Patsy unlocked with a key from her apron pocket, she whispered with exasperation, “It not easy to ascend in this place, eh, boy? Once a servant son, always a servant son.” The boy turned to look at her. She watched his face redden. She said, “At least you have good looks, and you going to school. Put crack in the mold, child. Go your way and crack mold, you hear?” And she pushed him out, locking the gate behind him.

  PASSING

  Sunday morning Mr. Persad went down to the gas station to begin the day’s work. As usual, first thing after opening the door and pulling up the venetian blind, he picked up and looked at the front page of the newspaper. This day’s paper, he quickly realized from its headlines, contained long-awaited important news. He removed his glasses, wiped them, and put them on again. He then flipped anxiously to the appropriate page. Suddenly he stood up. There it was. He fingered and read one single line over and over. When he could believe his eyes, he folded the paper neatly and held it against his chest. Then, as calmly as he might, he swung the minute hand of the WE WILL REOPEN AT cardboard clock on the door of the office to twenty past the hour. He locked the door and went quickly back to his house. Dolly in the kitchen, surprised by his return, asked, “What happen?”

  By way of telling her to wait, he said only, “Just now,” and carried on through the house.

  The boy was awake, but it being a Sunday morning, he lay idly in his bed. Mr. Persad knocked on his door, calling him out to the kitchen.

  Dolly stood close to her son as he hesitantly opened the paper to the results of the national exam. Mr. Persad sat and watched. Dolly crowded over his shoulder as he ran a forefinger swiftly down the columns of names. It took him a while to figure out how the paper had ordered the results: name of the area in which the exam had been sat, then by gender, and then alphabetically by surname. South, southwest. Canadian Friends Presbyterian. Boys. And there it was—unbelievably—St. George. There was only one St. George, and it was his name printed right there in the country’s national newspaper. And, even more unbelievably, next to his name was that of the school of his first choice. He turned and wrapped his arms around his mother’s waist. She cupped his face in her hands and kissed his forehead once.

  Mr. Persad said, “So you passed, boy. Good. Very good.” He looked at his watch. It was almost twenty past the hour. He got up and turned to go down the back stairs, to return to the gas station.

  Dolly said rather loudly, “Ehem …”

  Mr. Persad turned as if his name had been said.

  “Well, he pass
. Is true. But is you … is you what …”

  She wasn’t able to say exactly what it was Mr. Persad had done. The boy understood her intention, though, and went over to Mr. Persad. He put both hands on his stepfather’s shoulders and pressed his body awkwardly against him. As he patted the child’s back, Mr. Persad, as if responding to an uttered appreciation, said, “You welcome, boy. You did very good, son, very good. You must be proud of yourself, you hear? You have a future ahead of you.”

  The boy pored over page after page of children’s names. His voice trembling and deep with excitement, he called out to his mother, “Ma, Look. Sangha. Look it here. Mrs. Sangha daughter pass, too. She pass for the convent.”

  Days later he said to his mother, “Mammy, you see Mrs. Sangha yet?”

  “Mrs. Sangha? Why I would see she? What you mean?”

  “I mean since our names make the paper.”